Student Loan Repayment- Oversees

Taheera

Hi all,

I will send a summary of my situation and I would be grateful for your advise.

I have taken a student loan while being in the UK and once I completed my studies I have left the country and moved overseas. I was not working for a while and living with my parents. Once I found a job again I have moved countries.

In the meantime I was not able to pay the loan and since I never received any communication from SLC I ended up leaving it as it is. I have then contacted them various times over the last years but no one was ever able to locate my profile.

Now a few years later I have received some strange emails from SLC- Repayment but since it seemed to be a third party company contacting me through LinkedIn and through my personal email, I was reluctant to send them any personal information via email which I found questionable. When calling them back various times in the quest of verifying the company, they kept mentioning my account was not found and one of the advisors even mentioned that I could just let it be for now. This is 6 months ago.

I have now recently received another email from them asking me to urgently get in touch, and as a matter of goodwill and not wanting to run away from the loan, I have contacted them back and they have mentioned that the reason that all this time I tried getting in touch with them my name was spelled wrong (their issue) but they kept trying to make me responsible for it as according to them I never replied to any communications. (Which I never received).

They have requested me to update my details on the Student loan Repayment website and provide financial information for all these years as well as send them my passport copy so they can update my real name. They also mentioned that I would have to pay a minimum of 9% of my currently salary which is much more than the 150 GBP which I am willing to pay as I have other expenditures and paying more wouldn't be possible. They mentioned that till I provide all this information they will not be able to give me an idea on how much i would have to pay back, which I find scary as I don't want to end up having to pay more than I can afford.

My question is, is there any way to pay back either the full amount/ instalments without having to provide information on the last years, and should I go ahead and update my information or do I have the right to not share certain information.

Also is this a legitimate site? studentloanrepayment.co.uk
Thank you very much in advance.

sheramber

Yes, that is the correct site.

On there you can read how repayment is calculated for overseas residents

Do you have to update your information? Read the conditions you agreed to when you signed the application for a student loan.

Taheera

Thank you very much for your reply. They have asked me to update my details as apparently otherwise I can't make any repayments.

I am glad that the site is legitimate.
I have moved so many times and I doubt that I could locate the contract.

Would you think that if I offer to pay they will still want me to update the details? I have showed initiate and contacted them to make the payment, but I don't want to pursue it if it means that they will end up penalising me for something.